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Programming Designs - How's it look?

I've had the site up for about a year now and recently switched hosting from Windows to a Linux server (biiig improvement) and had made a lot of changes with my site's layout and presentation. I've had some criticism about the way I present my content -- just doesn't appeal to the visitors, and would like some feedback on that.

I'd also be glad to hear what you think about the design/functionality and your overall thoughts.

And I know, theres 2 validation errors, it's caused by a javascript I'm running and for some reason if I put &amp; the PHP script won't read the parameter correctly.

I'm thinking I need to add some more style to the other pages besides the main page (which I focused on the other day) and perhaps changing some of the actual message that I'm trying to convey through the content. I'm planning on starting some Web 2.0 services soon and developing a community more than anything -- the paid services I offer are more of a side thing.

General look is quite clean and modern IMO. No extraneous use of gimmicks and (unusually in my experience) I couldn't find a spelling mistake on the front page at least.

The only minor niggle I have is in some of the entries (for example in the "SEO Lessons" section) you have a "Date Added" entry. Please consider having that in a format that's more easy to decipher. As I'm from the UK my natural format is dd-mm-yy, but yours (I think) are US mm-dd-yy. I would think it would be clearer to anyone to show it as mmname dd yy (for example 21 Jan 2006) as it's instantly clear what format it is - right now it's a case of looking for one that would be invalid in UK format. OK, I guess that putting month names won't help for non-english readers, but then the rest of the site won't be legible either in that case.

Too picky? Well, I did say it was a minor niggle, and if the site is firmly targetted at one country's visitors then it won't be an issue, and not implementing this won't make it a bad site.

First thing I thought of was "information overload" when I first went to the site. There is a ton of text without a clearly defined area of what's what. Other than that, I think the colors work and the overall design is nice.

The elements that jump out at me, above the fold, are the word designs (in the header), and that circular arrow icon to the left of "We are a team of experienced individuals". The repetition of the arrow icon in the header does move my eye down to the opener paragraph - is that the way you planned it?

Below the header - the forum spy bit. "Programming Designs Forum Spy : See what posts are cookin!" is a little wordy. Since it's not a bright color, and against a grad of sorts, some parts of the sentence are easier to read (end) than others (beginning). The grads in the four sections below make the text within harder to read. The text is too long, the line-height looks too large, and the padding is too tight. I might move that section, or make it smaller, (it seems to be interrupting the "flow" from the header to your opening paragraph). In short it's busy and too strong.

Your welcome paragraph reads a tad dry - and more like it belongs in your About Us section. "We focus on the imperfect and non-existent..." I know what you mean, but it reads funny, like you focus on things that don't exist? I'd put the paragraph titled "What can we offer you?" in this spot as a matter of fact.

Me, I wouldn't put advertising within my "here's who we are and why you should stick around and find out more about what we can do for you" section(s).

Your site is designed for 1000px min width. Did you consider a fluid layout?

You're using more than one <h1> tag. Only supposed to be one per page, and its supposed to contain something that describes your whole site. I think most of your <h1>'s should be <h2>'s or <h3>'s. Search on "html header tag" and find out more.

The section titled "Need Guidance?" illustrates the fact that you could be doing a better job of presenting your sites offerings - and leading your visitors to those places.

The section titled "We value our visitors" - those bullet points are pretty good - move them UP UP UP - don't make me scroll for them! And forget about the preamble - they list your sites offerings fine all by themselves! Make 'em links.

Yes, I definitely agree thatthe site looks too cluttered, with no definitive outline to each section, but I do like the layout of your sub-pages, eg: PHP scripts page - very neat and ordered. Try that same look on the home page (structure wise)?
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